


and i will be nimble and i will be quick; i will overcome all of this

by Dialux



Series: words for the lost, the captive beautiful, the wives, those less fortunate than we [2]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: ...the one time she fucks up leads to the hobbit so um., Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Lalwen just does not know when to give up, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, about doing things, in the fashion of the entirety of her family l o l, let's talk about the importance of doing things and not talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dialux/pseuds/Dialux
Summary: Here’s the thing about Lalwen: she refuses to die.[A character study of Lalwen, daughter of kings and crownless leader of both elves and men.]
Relationships: Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Írimë | Lalwen
Series: words for the lost, the captive beautiful, the wives, those less fortunate than we [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2101053
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73
Collections: Tolkien Gen Week 2020





	and i will be nimble and i will be quick; i will overcome all of this

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of... meta, I think, but hopefully it makes sense?

When Fingolfin rides to his doom and his death, he does not tell anyone.

He doesn’t tell Lalwen, either, but she finds out anyhow, because Lalwen has always known her brother too well to not know when he’s planning something. And Fingolfin _does_ plan it all out: Fingon’s coronation ceremony, the notes and secrets that he’s kept from everyone laid out in proper, neat lines on his desk, three letters written for each of his children with an unshaking hand and signed with his stamp.

Lalwen, when she finds out, does not try to dissuade him. She has never managed to dissuade any of her brothers from anything they wished to do; that was always Findis, being convincing, being furious when she could not convince them. But Lalwen has always known that the only control she has over the world is her own body: she’s spent a lifetime making her own choices, and she won’t take them from anyone.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” she asks.

Fingolfin looks up at her, his eyes like sparking storms. And there: _there_ is his anger. Fëanor had been a storm of fire and Findis a windstorm, but Fingolfin’s is as shocking and destructive as an earthquake and the tsunami that inevitably follows.

“Yes,” he says. “Will you help me?”

“I’ll miss you,” Lalwen tells him. “I love you. Of course I’ll help you.”

…

Ëonwë comes to her, where she stands on rough shale and stone. Lalwen sees him coming but does not try to hide; she cannot find the energy in her to disappear once more.

“Princess Lalwen,” he says. 

She feels the amusement of the name on her tongue: the survivors of Gondolin name her Lalwende when they want to seem more friendly, but Lalwen’s name has never changed, not for all of Fingolfin’s entreaties and all of Thingol’s commands. Lalwen her father named her, and Lalwen will not lose this last piece of her family inheritance to another’s wishes. It is yet another reminder that there is no one here who knows her: the last person to name her Lalwen in Quenya had been Fingon, before he banished her. The next is Ëonwë, who has never known her in Sindarin.

“My lord.”

“There is room on the boats for you.”

“I have heard your demands,” Lalwen tells him. “You wish me to sue for peace. Well, I will not! I have seen too much of war to be content with peace. Do you understand me?”

“Your brother and mother wish to see you.”

“And if I lived my life by others’ wishes, I would be long-dead.”

“Princess-”

“I am no princess,” says Lalwen, and turns away. “I’ve no wish to rule over people. I never have. The only joy I have ever known is in the song of the wind and laughter of the rivers, and the free wildness of the falcon’s flight. There are no words you may say to me that will send me to Aman.”

“May I ask where you will go?” asks Ëonwë quietly, after a long silence.

Lalwen closes her eyes, and then opens them, and looks onwards: to the north, where so many elves still fear to tread. The Host of the Valar has come to Angband, but no further, and all the balrogs and evil demons that fled Angband before Morgoth’s chaining have disappeared into those mountains.

“There is still darkness and death in this land,” says Lalwen, and chooses. “So long as I can wield a blade and yet hold breath, I shall fight it.” Then she turns to Ëonwë. “Do not,” she says, “tell my family where I go.”

“Silence is a cruel message,” he says quietly.

“Call me cruel, then,” says Lalwen. “But these paths are my own to walk, and mine to walk alone.”

…

She’d thought Fingolfin would ask her to accompany him.

He asks her to poison his son instead.

…

When Fingon wakes, he’s dizzy and nauseous. Lalwen catches him and guides him back to bed, and does not heed his curses or trembles or shouts.

“Aunt,” he gasps, finally, when he’s sagged back against the covers. _“Where is he?”_

Lalwen looks Fingon in the eye. “Gone,” she says levelly.

…

Fingon doesn’t banish her for drugging him in the aftermath of his father’s battle. Lalwen does not push her luck either, and appear overmuch near him. She knows that it’s difficult for him- that he’d never have let his father go alone- and that he cannot forgive Lalwen for preventing him from going.

Perhaps he also blames Lalwen for remaining behind when Fingolfin is gone.

 _You followed him everywhere,_ the air sings to her now, in a voice too similar to Findis’ own for Lalwen’s comfort. _And he survived everything else. Had you been there-_

Had Lalwen been there, she would have died with Fingolfin, and they both would have died together, and that would be the only comfort for their grieving family. 

Lalwen does not regret not giving that comfort to Fingon.

She has her own people here in Hithlum, a society of secrets and whispers that flit about the shadows of the city. They need her, because Lalwen has no heir and has not designated one yet, and if she rides off into the sunset like Fingolfin, they’ll be left without purpose and without action. She is here, leader of the guild of spies that needs a head that’s both visible and not: Lalwen, princess of the Noldor but also _forgotten_ princess of the Noldor, is the perfect face for it. 

_Had been_ the perfect face for it.

Now Lalwen simply rides out, day after day, and uses her voice- naturally loud; everything about her had once been naturally loud, including her laughter and her tears- to frighten the orcs into submission, and then cuts their heads off when they’re cowed enough. Her dark hair hides the blood well enough, and the dark stains on her clothes are a good enough dye for when she moves through the city silently, maintaining the spy systems that she’s done for centuries. 

She barely sleeps now, anyhow; her nights are spent listening to spies and her days are spent eradicating threats from the north. One needs her mind to be sharp and the other needs her blade to be sharp. Lalwen cherishes them both and hones her skills.

...

It’s two years later, just past dusk, when Lalwen hears a horn that she hasn’t heard in too long. Her heart skips and she doesn’t think; just grabs her sword, leaps on her horse, gallops out.

But Fingolfin isn’t blowing it; it’s Fingon, who inherited the horn along with everything else of his father, sweet Fingon with gold in his braids and a fierce arm, and he’s surrounded by orcs, the horn at his lips and less despair in his eyes than rage-

Lalwen does not know how she gets a bow, nor the arrows, but she looses one and does not even feel the sting on the inside of her arm from the bowstring. All she sees is the orc that falls. Then another, and another, and another: and then, finally, _finally,_ Lalwen is next to Fingon, near enough to draw the sword that’s her far more favored weapon, and she gets to slaughtering them.

When she turns around, he’s kneeling in mud, and there’s a slash so deep across his chest that Lalwen thinks he’s already dead.

“No,” she says. Stumbes forwards, catches him, and guides him onto her lap. Tangles her fingers in his hair. _“No, no-_ Fingon- you will _not-”_

“Atar,” he whispers. His hand comes up, and smears mud along Lalwen’s cheeks. “Atar.”

Everything hurts. 

Everything hurts so much, and Lalwen does not even have hope, does not even have the _vestiges_ of hope-

What has she done, what has she become-

 _No,_ thinks Lalwen, fierce, ferocious, and lifts Fingon into her arms, and runs back to the safety of the walls.

…

Later, he wakes. 

He looks up to the ceiling. Lalwen, who hasn’t left the room since bringing him back save to splash water on her face and strip out of the bloodsoaked clothing, studies his face closely; and what Fingon shows upon waking is not relief, nor even pain.

It’s disappointment.

“Father wasn’t there, was he?”

“No,” says Lalwen. “It was me.”

“You look very much like him.”

“Many have said so.”

“I,” says Fingon slowly, “don’t think it’s a good idea for you to remain here, Aunt Lalwen.”

Lalwen swallows. “I promised Fingolfin that I’d look after you.”

“And when I see you, I see my father. I need to be my own king. Not the king that he’d be proud of. The king I can be.”

“If the king you can be is silenced by the very memory of your father’s face,” Lalwen tells him, “it isn’t much of a king.”

Fingon doesn’t look at her. “Please don’t make me send you away.”

“You ask me to break my promise to my brother and hold to my oath to you as a king?” Lalwen does not laugh, but she wants to. “I will not watch you kill yourself for the sake of fruitless vengeance if I can stop it.”

“Which is why,” he says, “I don’t want you here.”

Lalwen licks her lips, then leans forwards and presses a kiss to his cheek. She has never been good at seeing the future; Lalwen lives in the present. She always has. The past holds little power over her, and the future little sway. 

“If you do something foolish,” she says, sitting back, “I will not save you.”

Fingon’s eyes close. He’d look like he’s sleeping if not for the painful clench of his hands. Of course this hurts him, too, sending the last of their family away from him; of course he’d want her near, if not for the fact that she represents all of his losses over the past centuries. 

“I love you,” Lalwen tells him sadly, and steps away. 

…

Fenerael joins her at the mouth of the river, knives strapped to her thighs and shield on her back, hair loose about her shoulders. 

“You’re leaving,” she says.

Lalwen blinks. “Yes, I am.”

“But not on the sea.”

“No,” she says. “No. I didn’t- want to.”

“Then where are you going?”

“North.”

Fenerael’s hair shines; she’s clearly washed it. But her eyes are brighter still, brighter even than her skin, with the bones gleaming under the thinnest layer of her skin.

“I’m coming with you.”

Lalwen stops. “No, you’re not.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I _can,_ actually.”

“Lalwen,” says Fenerael. “You can run from me. I’ll follow you. You can tie me up. I’ll cut the ropes. You can drug me. I’ll wake up. And I’m going to track you for every day of the rest of my lives if I must.”

“You don’t need to,” says Lalwen quietly. “I don’t want you to.”

“You’ve never cared about what others want before.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Lalwen tells her softly.

“I owe you everything,” corrects Fenerael. “But I’m not doing this because I owe you.”

…

She takes her people and heads south, all the way to the mouth of the Sirion and the sea. It’s warmer here than ever in Hithlum- the air muggier, the sun brighter. Orcs are always present, of course, but Lalwen’s people are hardy and know how to survive. 

When they hear of the plans to defeat Morgoth once and for all, of an alliance between men and elves, led by Maedhros and Fingon, they wish to go. Lalwen lets all those that wish it to leave, but refuses point blank when asked to accompany them.

Lalwen knows what happens before ever she is told: she is sitting on her roof, feet folded under her, and feels the snap of her bond to Fingon as it fades into darkness.

For a moment, she considers weeping. Her heart is so heavy. Her head aches so deeply. 

But she is named _Lalwen,_ is she not? Tears are not her trade. Laughter is what Lalwen prizes and what Lalwen knows, and that’s what matters. She looks up into the night sky, and she counts off the names of all those she’s lost to their unnumbered depths, long past when her eyes go blurry and she cannot differentiate between one pinprick and the next.

…

Perhaps Fingolfin had blamed Lalwen, too, for all the people she could not be, and for all the laughter that no amount of grief could silence from her mouth.

…

Here’s the thing about Lalwen: she refuses to die.

Here is the thing about life: a life without laughter is another kind of death. 

Here is another resistance that Lalwen refused to give up: laughter.

…

Doriath falls and its survivors come to Sirion. Gondolin falls and Idril comes to Sirion with a ragged band of refugees. Lalwen welcomes them all, and then she leaves again; she has little desire to rule, and less desire to rule over these people who are more desperate than they want to be and less grateful than she would like. 

Of course, the Silmaril is there as well, and Lalwen fears that more than anything else.

…

So she disappears again; fades into the land, lives off the land. She stays near Sirion, enough to fend off the worst of the attacks or warn them if there’s a bigger attack coming. Lalwen enjoys that, too. The orcs start to fear her, whenever they hear her horn or her scream or her laugh. There is one particular phrase they use around her that she doesn’t understand; when she asks someone who speaks the Black Tongue, they translate it to _Black-Toothed Bitch._

Lalwen laughs, delightedly: when she smiles at the orcs as she beheads them, it spatters across her face and teeth. 

She’ll take the title gladly.

…

The Fëanorians come, and Lalwen is there. 

Elwing- so young, too young- presses her sons into Lalwen’s arms. “I’ll distract them,” she says. “Get Elros and Elrond to safety.”

There is no time for goodbye. Lalwen flies, on sharp feet, on swift feet. But then, in the middle of reeds closing over her head-

_Darkness, darkness, darkness- terror like a knife- death and evil and loss- hair on mud and blood on a knife held in a hand Lalwen knows to be her own- the coldest of winds-_

-she comes back to herself, on her knees, the children still cradled in her arms but every other muscle trembling. 

“Ai, Elros,” she whispers, and presses a kiss to his forehead, then to Elrond’s. “Elrond. You have been failed by everyone you have ever known. I am so sorry, my loves. I am so sorry.”

She retraces her steps to the city, until she’s sprinting. There is so little _time-_

The smoke chokes her. Lalwen doesn’t stop until she sees the pyres: and then she pauses, briefly, and reroutes. Once upon a time, Lalwen had pulled her sister from the window of their father’s study when she feared Findis would shatter herself open. Now, she pulls Maglor from the fire that he’s trying to climb into.

“Enough. _Enough,”_ she snaps, and slaps him twice across the face.

“Uncle- uncle-” he blinks, then the recognition filters through. “Lalwen.”

“Listen to me.”

“Why?”

“Because there are two children here who need your help, you stupid, _stupid_ boy .Do I look like I have time to care about your feelings?”

“Amras- Amrod-”

 _“I don’t care,”_ says Lalwen. She feels the thinnest twinge of emotion; but she silences it. There are more important things at stake, and so little fucking _time._ “Take care of them. They are the hope of too many people.”

He chokes. “Do you know what I did to their mother?”

“Makalaurë,” says Lalwen. “Do I look like I care?”

…

She runs after that, north. North to the southernmost edge of what used to be Melian’s girdle, to Brethil. It’s cold; Lalwen does not let it hurt her. When she finally finds the Haladin, they are so diminished that she cannot believe them to be the same people that left Nargothrond.

Lalwen gets them up. Gets them moving. Orders anyone who will follow her to follow.

 _I have dreamt it,_ she says. _I have seen it._

 _You must survive,_ she says.

…

Fenerael is the leader of the people who decide to follow Lalwen. She is young: barely an adult by the standards of a human, much less elves. They flee east, as east as they can manage. As east and as north. 

They are mostly young, those that choose to follow her; young and ferocious and fierce. Lalwen runs them ragged and then even more ragged. There is a place of safety, of that much she’s certain; it’s just too far- too cold- too-

“Tell me this,” says Fenerael, when they lose three of their numbers to a roving band of orcs. It’s night; she’s sitting at the fire besides Lalwen. Her hair is braided up, but there is blood splattered over it, still, thick and heavy. “Do we have reason to hope?”

“Yes,” says Lalwen. “There is a place in the eastern highlands: Ered Mithrin.”

“I haven’t heard of it.”

“No,” says Lalwen quietly. She tosses some grass on the fire, watches the sparks go high. “I haven’t either. But I know it is there- the mountains, certainly- and there is a place of safety there. Somewhere you can survive. Somewhere you can thrive.”

“It’ll take years to go there,” says Fenerael. She closes her eyes and leans back. “Decades, maybe.”

“If it does,” says Lalwen, “if it takes every ounce of blood in my bones. I’ll take you there.” She pauses, and then reaches out to grip Fenerael’s wrist. “There is hope, Fenerael. I promise you that much.”

…

Lalwen slays balrogs, and then slays orcs, and then slays ice dragons.

Fenerael is with her for long years; Lalwen finally manages to get her to go back to Ered Mithrin when she grows too old for the danger. She returns to the mountain-home of the Haladin once every century at least. She holds the line of the north, for thousands of years.

They say the echo of Morgoth’s lamentations still lived on Anfauglith for centuries after Ungoliant’s betrayal. Lalwen’s laughter lives on in the northern reaches of Middle-Earth for centuries after her heroics.

…

When Lalwen dies, it’s at the hands of the smallest dragon she’s fought. She thinks it’s rather stupid; she laughs at herself even as the blood bubbles over her lips. She laughs, and laughs, and laughs, even as she sets fire to Smaug’s hoard, and watches him fly away. He might have killed her, but she has destroyed his home, and Lalwen knows which is the more wrenching pain, she of the homeless and the dispossessed and the prideful beyond all reason.

…

She opens her eyes in Mandos’ halls to see her brothers and her nephews and her niece. Lalwen looks at them, and rises to her feet, and _laughs._


End file.
